Sun Unveils Developer Tools and More

At a Silicon Valley press event, Sun Microsystems rolls out new services and Java-focused tools, even as Sun and Microsoft continue to clash.

In a set of announcements made this week at a Sun Microsystems Silicon Valley press event, the company rolled out new software, including a suite of developer's tools. The event also included new details about Sun's strategy of offering application server software in bundled and freely licensed fashion. . The announcements were made by Jonathan Schwartz, who had been the company's chief strategy officer but is moving to lead Sun's software development efforts. Interestingly enough, several of the announcements closely parallel announcements made recently by Microsoft.

One Sun announcement concerned the SunONE Developer Platform, which the company claims is a platform-agnostic environment for speeding up creation, assembly, and deployment of Java Web services. Tools within the SunONE Developer Platform are built on SunONE Studio 4.0 and SunONE Application, Portal, Identity, Registry, and Integration server software, with Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) at the core.
The SunONE Studio development tools for the Java platform were also a big part of the announcement. Formerly, the Forte for Java product family, SunONE Studio tools are designed to help developers build end-to-end Web services applications that let mobile devices communicate with multiple application servers.

As had been expected after Sun's Solaris 9 announcement last month, the company also officially revealed a new version of its application serverThe SunONE Application Server, Platform Editionwhich is now fully integrated with the Solaris 9 operating system. Last month, in announcing the bundling of the application server within Solaris, Sun officials said that offering an application server within the operating system could reduce costs for enterprises that want to implement Web services. Working on that same theme, Sun has announced that the application server will also be available for free as a download for AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows.

"The app server has become just like the Web server. There used to be 15 Web servers, and now the Web server is a least common denominator," said Schwartz at Sun's announcement. "We see the same trend happening with app servers." A separate release from Sun claimed the app server would "ensure ubiquitous distribution of a low-cost, high-performance Java technology-based application server, helping customers and ISVs to lower their total cost of ownership."

The announcements from Sun emphasized the company's claim that it is continuing to concentrate on open standards. In addition, much emphasis was placed on Java being what Schwartz claims is "now the standard for delivering application services on the Internet."

Marge Breya, vice president of SunONE, also confirmed that Sun is preparing to announce specific details on how the company's recent moves will relate to the efforts of the Liberty Alliance Project. "Liberty is one of the biggest pushes to deliver secure online identities," she said, "and in the next couple of weeks we will deliver the core specification for Liberty. The Liberty-enablement of our core products is what's up next for us." The goals of the Liberty Alliance Project are, however, at odds in some ways with comparable efforts recently announced by Microsoft recently announced. In the question and answer session that followed Sun's event, officials said "watch carefully for other identity protection strategies that won't be royalty free and based on open standards," leaving little question about which other strategies they meant.

This announcement, as with many recent ones from Sun, indicates that the company's moves are becoming increasingly parallel to those of Microsoft. These announcements and those at this year's JavaONE, closely track the focus on Web services found in Microsoft's .NET effort and within Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET suite of developer tools. The difference, however, is that Sun is focusing heavily on Java as being central to the delivery of Web services, while Microsoft is increasingly trying to shun Java.

In a separate announcement separate announcement this week covered by PC Magazine's sister publication eWeek, Microsoft's Jim Cullinan, lead product manager for Windows, said that Microsoft will deliver its version of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in Windows XP via the upcoming SP1 service pack for XP. But Microsoft is going ahead with plans to remove Java support from Windows as of January 1, 2004. Cullinan cited the recent legal action Sun has taken against Microsoft as a prompt for Microsoft's decision to include the JVM in SP1.

Sebastian Rupley is Editorial Director for PCMagCast, PC Magazine's channel for live Web seminars and online events on tech topics for consumers and small businesses. Previously, he was West Coast Editor of PC Magazine for over a decade, where he oversaw news and feature stories for the publication, and represented the brand on panels and at conferences on the West Coast. He also served as Features Editor of PC/Computing magazine, managing and promoting many noted technology journalists.
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